helios-launcher

Graphical launcher for the Heidelberg LiDAR Operations Simulator (HELIOS++) using the Qt framework

You need a working installation of HELIOS++ from GitHub.

Some settings like the HELIOS++ base directory, survey path or optional arguments are saved between sessions. These settings are stored as an *.ini configuration file in the default QSettings directory:

• For Linux, this is usually ~/.config/heliospp/helios-launcher.ini
• For Windows, this is usually C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\heliospp\helios-launcher.ini

Installation (Linux)

Debian package (most recommended)

• Open the helios-launcher-v{VERSION}-lin64.deb in your software center
• Hit the Install button and enter your password
• To uninstall, open the helios-launcher-v{VERSION}-lin64.deb again in your software center and click Uninstall (This will keep the settings file)

Alternatively:

• Open the the directory that contains helios-launcher-v{VERSION}-lin64.deb in the terminal
• Execute sudo dpkg -i helios-launcher-v{VERSION}-lin64.deb and enter your password
• To uninstall, execute sudo dpkg -r helios-launcher to keep the settings file or sudo dpkg --purge helios-launcher to remove the settings file

AppImage

• Make the AppImage executable (e.g. via the file manager or via chmod u+x helios-launcher-v{VERSION}-lin64.AppImage)
• Important notice: AppImages need FUSE 2 to run, which isn't pre-isntalled on Ubuntu 22.04 or newer. In this case make sure to install FUSE 2 with sudo apt install libfuse2.

Portable version

• Extract the helios-launcher-v{VERSION}-lin64-portable.tar.gz archive to an arbitrary location
• Open /path/to/helios-launcher-v{VERSION}-lin64-portable in the terminal
• Execute the shell script ./helios-launcher.sh
• Alternatively: Navigate to the bin subdirectory and execute LD_LIBRARY_PATH=../lib ./helios-launcher

Installation (Windows)

• Install by running the setup: helios-launcher-v{VERSION}-win64-setup.exe
• OR: Extract the zip file helios-launcher-v0.1.0-win64-portable.zip, go to the extracted folder and to the bin subdirectory, and run helios-launcher.exe

Usage

At the first program start you have to specify the HELIOS++ installation directory (i.e. the folder that contains the data, pyhelios, run, etc. folders).

• In the UI the first line specifies the path to the HELIOS++ installation directory.
• The second line conatins the path to a survey.xml.
• In the third line you have to specify if you want to use the normal HELIOS++ executable (run/helios on Linux or run\helios.exe on Windows) or the python script run/helios.py.
• To set all the other optional arguments you can use either the UI elements, or the Argument editor.
• Before running HELIOS++ with the selected options, you have to specify if you want to use the UI elements OR the argument editor as the command source. The command to be executed is displayed at the bottom of the window.
• Hit the Run button or use Alt+R to execute HELIOS++ with the selected arguments. The output is displayed on the right.